For a limited time only

Three years ago, I started another blog. Let me explain why.

During the 1990s, BBC Radio 1 ran an annual mini-festival called Sound City (not to be confused with Liverpool Sound City or the Dave Grohl movie – if it wasn’t branded “Radio 1” then it’s not relevant here). The idea was that every year they would occupy a series of venues in the city of choice, and broadcast gigs live every evening. I used to tape (look it up, kids) some of these gigs off the radio, despite the fact that home taping was killing music. And occasionally tracks from various Sound City gigs would make their way onto magazine cover-mounted CDs or tapes.

Anyway, the purpose of the new blog was to pull together various recordings and other memorabilia from those gigs, highlighting the quality and, if truth be told, ignoring any dross. I only started doing this after trying to find a track from Sound City 1993 online and being unable to – it was twenty years ago, after all, and how many people were digitising live radio broadcasts back then?

The trouble was, I featured a Manics track, and got DMCA'ed. Thinking I was smart, I moved the whole shebang from Blogger to Wordpress ... and promptly got DMCA'ed again, for the same live Manics track. Realising corporate behemoths have the resources to be smarter than me, I mothballed the whole lot.

Except I don't want to deprive the Internet of that one track I couldn't find anywhere else online (The Frank And Walters doing an acoustic cover of The Vapors' Turning Japanese - I eventually found my old taped recording and ripped it), or any of the other gems I found. So, for now at least, The Sound City Sessions is back up, minus that Manics track and the songs I'd sourced from Grooveshark, which has since ceased operations (a shame, as I had found some Pulp, Oasis and, er, Jamiroquai live tracks on there).

I won't be adding anything new (unless something exceptional turns up) but for now, assuming the DMCA police don't get upset again, the Sound City Sessions blog is back up for your listening pleasure at:

https://soundcitysessions.wordpress.com/

Here's a sneak preview of the sort of thing you'll find there:

And the limited time only bit? I'm thinking of re-mothballing it all again this time next week. So hurry, hurry, hurry...